THE MUSIC SALON: classical music, popular culture, philosophy and anything else that catches my fancy...

Sunday, July 16, 2017

Roger Kimball: The Fortunes of Permanence

I don't do too many book reviews here, but The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia to give its full title, just published on July 4, looks rather good. Roger Kimball has written a lot of books including Tenured Radicals from way back in 1991. The real reason I don't do book reviews is probably that I don't have the qualifications! Unless it is a book on music, of course. But I can direct your attention to a book that might be worth reading...

This is a cultural critique with an impressive depth of learning behind it. Sample quote:

The deepest foolishness of multiculturalism shows itself in the puerile attacks it mounts on the cogency of scientific rationality, epitomized poignantly by the Afrocentrist who flips on his word processor to write books decrying the parochial nature of Western science and extolling the virtues of the “African way.”

[Kimball, Roger. The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia (Kindle Locations 129-131). St. Augustine's Press. Kindle Edition.]

In analyzing an HSBC ad campaign he points out the following:

The ostensible tenet of this catechism is that all cultures are equally valuable and, therefore, that preferring one culture, intellectual heritage, or moral and social order to another is to be guilty of ethnocentrism. It’s actually not quite as egalitarian as it looks, however, for you soon realize that the doctrine of cultural relativism is always a weighted relativism: Preferring Western culture or intellectual heritage is culpable in a way that preferring other traditions is not.

[ibid, Kindle Locations 138-141]

This passage has attracted a few comments and summarizes the argument of the book:

the fruits of egalitarianism are ignorance, the habit of intellectual conformity, and the systematic subjection of cultural achievement to political criteria. In the university, this means classes devoted to pop novels, rock videos, and third-rate works chosen simply because their authors are members of the requisite sex, ethnic group, or social minority. It involves an attack on permanent things for the sake of the trendy and ephemeral. It means students who are graduated not having read Milton or Dante or Shakespeare— or, what is in some ways even worse, who have been taught to regard the works of such authors chiefly as hunting grounds for examples of patriarchy, homophobia, imperialism, or some other politically correct vice. It means faculty and students who regard education as an exercise in disillusionment and who look to the past only to corroborate their sense of superiority and self-satisfaction. The Fortunes of Permanence aims to disturb that complacency and reaffirm the tradition that made both the experience of and the striving for greatness possible.

[ibid. Kindle Locations 235-242]

Kimball's analysis of relativism as being one of the prime culprits is quite good. Egalitarians attack all hierarchies as being immoral, but typically they then smuggle in their own utopian ideas as replacement. And the end of that road is always great human suffering. Of course the power of progressivism lies in its pretense to being shiny and new. I am reminded of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's reply to a critic who questioned his appointment of a cabinet that was precisely 50% men and 50% women (what, no transexuals?). When asked why he simply replied, "Because it's 2015." Well, there you go! Brave New World. While seeming both cool and logical, this is really an attack on the idea that anything can have inherent value. Progressivism in that way justifies itself: what we are doing is good because it is progressive and because it is progressive it is good. And then you wake up one day and find yourself agreeing that Bach is no better than Justin Bieber.

I am just reading the book myself, so I can't offer any global criticism, but it seems both well-written and well-founded, so probably worth a look.

UPDATE: Agh! Somehow I missed that this book was actually published in 2012. Sorry, I thought it was a new publication.

Awards

Quotes

"I always find plenty to disagree with on Bryan's blog but I always find it a stimulating place for discussion and I seem to learn something new every time I visit this site."

--commentator Anonymous

"Your "blog" is priceless to me and many others."

--commentator Archilochus

I am so thankful for obsessive thinkers and writers like yourself who give us something interesting and intellectually nourishing to chew on almost every day. And your discussions have clarified and expanded many of my views about art and music in particular.

Bravissimo!

--commentator Jives

Congratulations for running a comments section full of enlightening aesthetic debates.

--commentator Jack

Thanks for your devotion and hard work on this blog. It should be required reading for anyone with love of, or interest in, classical music.

--commentator David

Great writing here at the music salon by the way - I just found the site recently and have been really enjoying it. Within the last year, I've started exploring the western classical tradition and your writing here has been a recent springboard to so much good music!

--commentator Jon

"I've been reading your blog for nearly a year now, and as a college student new to the world of classical music I have to say it's been incredibly informative."

--Matthew Briehl

"This is the most consistently engaging and instructive music blog of which I am aware."

About Me

Born in Alberta, Canada, grew up on Vancouver Island, lived a decade in Montreal, resident in Mexico since 1998. Degrees in music from McGill University in performance, post-graduate study in musicology. From 2008 to 2011 I wrote a large set of songs for voice and guitar on poems by Robert Graves, Wallace Stevens, Victor Hugo, Rilke, Aristophanes, Anna Akhmatova, Roethke, Li Po, John Donne and Philip Larkin.
Catalogue includes two suites for solo guitar, chamber music for violin, viola and guitar, two guitars and harpsichord and other combinations including three pieces for guitar orchestra published by Guitarissimo of Stockholm, Sweden. In the last couple of years I have focused on music for orchestra and so far I have written an overture and three symphonies.
Publications include two books of pedagogy for guitar, one on technique and the other on playing Bach, which included eight new transcriptions for guitar.
Four Pieces for Violin and Guitar are available from The Avondale Press: http://www.theavondalepress.com/catalog/four-pieces/
In April 2015 a new piece for violin and piano, "Chase" was premiered in a concert at Belles Artes in San Miguel de Allende, Gto. Mexico.